Editing & promises of summer

There’s a touch of summer in the air today. The wind still has it’s bite of winter, the memories of snow on it’s fingertips. The flowers don’t care. They stick with their decision, they’re coming now, stretching their long necks and beautiful faces toward the sky. It’s blue there; and warm. Spring is here and summer is coming.

Nature has it’s own way and mind. It doesn’t ponder and waver. It has it’s ways and it sticks to it, no doubts, no thoughts on changing anything.

So unlike the human mind.

Doubts, confusion, pondering this or that way, changing, wondering … Is this the right way or is it that? What will happen in this case? Or if I do it otherwise. Even when you’re done, finished, satisfied – it lasts only moments before the Ways of the Human Mind kick in: maybe I should change this?

And it has happened to me. Weeks after publishing The Sunset Valkyrie I’ve come to doubt everything about it – and even begun editing again. I still haven’t made the decision to unpublish and start over, but I’m working on it again. A product I found done and perfect – now undone.

I guess that’s the danger with self-publishing. You can always go back, change your mind. If it was out there the old way, you’d have to live with the decision of it being gone and out of your hands once you pushed play.

Maybe it would be easier. I somehow think so. It would be done and unchangable, nothing you could do about it. And I could move on with the next project and keep my focus on that.

Alas, I’ve taken the first steps on a path I can hardly go back on. I’ve started editing and now it’s taken over my mind. I can’t unthink it.

Maybe it’s the same way with the spring flowers. Once they awake, they can’t go back. Even if frost and snow re-conquers the ground, they can’t go back to sleep. They have to keep growing now they’ve started, and no matter the outcome. Maybe they know the frost will kill them, and still they have to keep growing, hoping the sun will come out to save them before it’s too late.

I’ll keep editing until the new idea is done. And then I’ll decide whether to publish or not. Frost or spring, grow to live and flourish, or grow to certain death.